Course Offerings

Winter 2022▲

See complete information about these courses in the course offerings database. For more information about a specific course, including course type, schedule and location, click on its title.

Arts of Mesoamerica and the Andes

ARTH 170 - Lepage, Andrea C.

This course fulfills the Arts and Humanities requirement for the LACS minor. Survey of the art and architecture of Mesoamerica and the Andes before the arrival of the Europeans, with a focus on indigenous civilizations including the Olmec, Maya, Aztec, and Inca. Art is contextualized in terms of religious, social, political, and economic developments in each region under discussion. The class includes a trip to the Virginia Museum of fine Arts in Richmond or the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Art and Revolution: Mexican Muralism

ARTH 274 - Lepage, Andrea C.

This course fulfills the Arts and Humanities requirement for the LACS minor. A survey of public monumental art produced by Mexican artists Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros in Mexico and the United States from 1910 to the 1970s. Lectures focus on art that promotes social ideals and the role that art played in building a new national consciousness in Mexico. Students also examine the impact of muralism throughout Latin America and the United States.

Capstone Seminar in Latin American and Caribbean Studies

LACS 396 - Botta, Monica B.

This capstone course builds upon the foundations developed in LACS 101 and related coursework in the distribution areas. Students discuss assigned readings centered around a key theme or themes of Latin American Studies in connection with an individualized research project. This project is carried out with continual mentoring by a faculty member and in collaboration with peer feedback. Each student presents his/her findings in a formal paper, or other approved end-product, and summarizes the results in an oral presentation.

Accelerated Intermediate Portuguese

PORT 163 - Reino, Jayne E.

This course develops intermediate communicative Portuguese vocabulary and active intermediate competence in the language. The traditional skills of world-language instruction (structure, listening comprehension, reading, writing, and speaking) are stressed. This course meets five days per week.

Introducción a la literatura hispanoamericana

SPAN 240 - Barnett, Jeffrey C. (Jeff)

Spanish-American literary masterpieces from colonial times through the present. Readings and discussions are primarily in Spanish.

Spanish-American Seminar

SPAN 398A - Botta, Monica B.

A seminar focusing on a single period, genre, motif, or writer. Recent topics have included "Spanish American Women Writers: From America into the 21st Century," "20th Century Latin America Theater," and "Past, Memory, and Identity in Contemporary Argentina's Cultural Products." May be repeated for degree credit if the topics are different.

Winter 2022, SPAN 398A-01: Spanish-American Seminar: Representaciones del yo y el espacio autobiográfico (3). Prerequisites: SPAN 240. Este curso examina los recursos que emplean los sujetos autobiográficos para su representación en una serie de relatos, testimonios, y documentales en primera persona. El seminario se centra en algunos aspectos vinculados con la imagen autorial, el mito personal y la escena de escritura y de lectura, así como también analiza nociones teóricas que indagan los nexos entre la autoconfiguración, la identidad y la conciencia de género, de clase y de raza. (HL) Botta.

 

Fall 2021▲

See complete information about these courses in the course offerings database. For more information about a specific course, including course type, schedule and location, click on its title.

Border Art: Contemporary Chicanx and U.S. Latinx Art

ARTH 378 - Lepage, Andrea C.

This course fulfills the Arts and Humanities requirement for the LACS minor. This seminar engages broad-ranging debates that have looked at the Mexico-US border as a fruitful site of identity formation. In this seminar, we examine artworks with an emphasis on location, critical standpoint, interrelatedness, and the geopolitics of identity. Through readings and class discussions, students investigate protest art and arts activism. Students develop methods of "critical seeing" through image analysis, art historical analysis, and cultural critique. We consider artworks produced by Chicanx, U.S. Latinx, and other transnational artists in a wide range of formats including printmaking, performance art, mural painting, photography, film and video, books, comics, public art projects, and an array of post-conceptual practices..

Introduction to Latin American and Caribbean Studies

LACS 101 - Pinto-Bailey, Ana C. (Cristina)

A multidisciplinary, introductory course designed to familiarize students with the pertinent issues that determine or affect the concept of identity in Latin American and Caribbean societies through a study of their geography, history, politics, economics, literature, and culture. The purpose of the course is to provide a framework or overview to enhance understanding in the students' future courses in particular disciplines and specific areas of Latin American and Caribbean study.

Latin American Politics

POL 247 - Ponce de Leon Seijas, Zoila

This course focuses on Latin American politics during the 20th and 21st centuries. Major topics include: democracy and authoritarianism; representation and power; populism, socialism, and neoliberalism; and economic development and inequality. The course places particular emphasis on Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, and Cuba. In addition, the course examines political relations between the United States and Latin America.

Poverty and Marginality in the Americas

SOAN 263 - Perez, Marcos E.

In recent decades, some global transformations have increased inequality and marginality in various regions of the world. Neoliberalism has generated both opportunities and challenges to human development In different countries. This course focuses on how the undermining of safety nets, the decline of models of economic growth centered on state intervention, and the internationalization of labor markets have affected societies in Latin America and the United States. Students analyze the structural causes of marginality and how the experience of poverty varies for people in both regions. We rely on anthropological and sociological studies to address key questions. How do disadvantaged individuals and families in the Americas deal with the challenges brought about by deindustrialization, violence, and environmental degradation? How do their communities struggle to sustain public life? What are the processes causing many people to migrate from one region to the other?

Introducción a la literatura hispanoamericana

SPAN 240 - Botta, Monica B.

Spanish-American literary masterpieces from colonial times through the present. Readings and discussions are primarily in Spanish.

Spanish-American Short Story

SPAN 340 - Barnett, Jeffrey C. (Jeff)

A study of the Spanish-American short story with special attention to the works of Quiroga, Borges, Cortázar, and Valenzuela.

Spring 2021▲

See complete information about these courses in the course offerings database. For more information about a specific course, including course type, schedule and location, click on its title.

Chicana/o Art and Muralism: From the Street to the (Staniar) Gallery

ARTH 276 - Lepage, Andrea C.

This course fulfills the Arts and Humanities requirement for the LACS minor. This class examines the process by which Chicana/o artists have garnered public attention and respect, taking their artworks from the peripheries of the art world to museum and gallery spaces. Using the Great Wall of Los Angeles as a connecting thread, this class considers the broad theme of identity creation and transformation as expressed by Chicana/o artists from the 1970s to the present.

Special Topics in Latin American and Caribbean Studies

LACS 195 - Michelson, Seth R.

A topical seminar that focuses on an interdisciplinary examination of a singular theme relevant to the overall understanding of Latin America and the Caribbean region, such as Hispanic Feminisms, the Indigenous Americas, or Shifting Borders, among others. As an introductory seminar, topics are selected with the purpose in mind to present the student with a broad, regional view within the scope of a restricted focus or medium. May be repeated for credit if the topics are different.

Spring 2021, LACS 195-01: Special Topics in Latin American and Caribbean Studies: Rise Up! Indigenous Poetry and Resistance in the Hemispheric Americas (4).  What, if anything, can poetry do in the face of injustice? How, if at all, can it influence shared experience? And in what ways can it inflect, and perhaps even constitute, identity, whether individual or collective? To approach such complex questions, this course engages poetries of resistance by Indigenous poets of the hemispheric Americas. Together we will read and discuss a broad and scintillating diversity of periods, places, and peoples, all the while endeavoring to understand the potential intersections of poetry, identity, injustice, and resistance. Implicitly, this is also to say that we will be celebrating life. We will be exploring the potential of poetry to present and affirm diverse ways of being in the world, as well as its capacity to create new solidarities and communities, and to encourage equity and inclusion. To enhance such study, we also will read pertinent prose, drawing upon memoir, critical indigenous theory, and trauma theory, among other interdisciplinary fields. Students will even try their hand at expressive writing (no experience needed!), and they can look forward to a collaborative, vibrant, and supportive environment for the free and open exchange of creative thought. Michelson.

Special Topics in Literature in Translation

LIT 295 - Pinto-Bailey, Ana C. (Cristina)

A selected topic focusing on a particular author, genre, motif or period in translation. The specific topic is determined by the interests of the individual instructor. May be repeated for degree credit if the topics are different.

Spring 2021, LIT 295-04: Special Topics in Literature in Translation: Gender and Race in Latin America Literature and Film (3). Prerequisite: Completion of FDR-FW requirement.  In this class, students will examine the intersection of gender and race as represented in Latin American film and literature (narrative fiction and poetry). Considering the complexities of both Latin America and of the concepts of race and gender, the course will focus on the Latin American African diaspora to address the following key issues: slavery and its legacies; the symbolic representation and self-representation of Afro-Latin Americans in literature and film; Afro-Latin Americans' cultural-political activism, among others. (HL) Pinto-Bailey.